M T McGuire

The published works of M T McGuire

The day‐to‐day challenges of being a fuckwit and other stuff …

There are times when I enjoy being me and other times when I wish I was one of the normal bastards.

I also loathe and detest the first person who decided that it would be a good idea to nick something that belonged to someone else, resulting in the bane of my fucking life; keys. One of the many things the Romans gave us, I believe, along with underground elder and rabbits, oh no wait, that was the Normans wasn’t it? And organised people. Because organised people are organised the rest of us all have to bloody do it their way. Jeepers, if I could a penny for every minute I’ve pissed away looking for my keys, breaking into my own house or generally footering about on key‐related shite I’d be giving Jeff Bezos a run for his money.

Yes, as you can guess, I locked myself out of my house again this week. I also failed to meet and greet McMini’s new headmaster, who is the spit of a TV personality from a popular magazine programme. The curriculum meeting, which I did get to, was rather disconcerting as I felt as if I was in a TV audience and half expected the other presenters on the TV programme to turn up too. Quite weird. Anyway, I set my phone to beep when the headmaster’s new meet and greet session was on because I knew I hadn’t a hope in hell of remembering through my menopausal brain fog. Did the stupid thing go off?

Did it buffalo!

It just showed me a message which, of course, I didn’t chuffing see, the phone being in my pocket while I was riding a bike. I think there’s been an ‘improvement’ to they’ve dicked about with the diary facility on my phone and not mentioned it, as per usual, because clearly google’s users have nothing better to do after the weekly update than spend the rest of the week working out what it’s improved fucked up. I haven’t worked out how to persuade the alarm function to make a noise since it used to do so automatically.

Do you know, I’m beginning to wonder if technology isn’t something The Man has given us all to do so we don’t notice how many companies are screwing us over or what bastards the politicians are.

Anyway, there I was on Tuesday, having discovered that I’d missed the meet and greet, but on the up side at least I was finally remembering to pay in a cheque the Inland Revenue had sent my dad about three weeks earlier. But I decided I’d go to M&S first, and afterwards, as I went to unlock the bike to head for the bank, that’s when I discovered that I didn’t have the keys.

Bollocks.

So I left my bike leaning against the lamp post to which I’d chained it and walked home. The gate to our garden runs across a narrow alley between our garage and next door’s. It’s quite high, about seven ft, so while I could leap up and undo the catch, I would probably end up swinging on the gate, or at least, breaking the gate with my huge weight as it tried to swing.

There is the wall, of course, but unfortunately, my knees are far too fucked to go over the wall these days, so I have to liberate something from a skip to stand on or, skips being a bit thin on the ground at the moment, I have to borrow a ladder from a neighbour. This time the unlucky recipients of my plea for help were the lovely folks at the cobbler’s shop opposite. Offered a choice of three sizes of stepladder, I chose a small compact type and suitably armed I returned to the back gate, set it up in front, climbed up, opened the gate without falling through it — result! — and went and got my keys from the back door of the garage. Then I pulled the gate to, with the keys about my person this time, handed the ladder back in at the shop and plodded back up the hill to town.

This is my life. This is a normal day for me. This is how I waste my precious fucking time. Flippin’ eck.

After liberating the bike, I found the bank just opening. Apparently they do training on Tuesday until 9.30, not that there is any mention of this on their opening hours sign. Sigh. Clearly the Chaos Fairies knew and were just finding me a more interesting way of occupying my time than waiting outside. Little shites.

Cheque paid in I returned home.

Today I discover that I have forgotten to buy my Dad a new set of pyjamas so it’ll be all hands on deck to do that in a moment … when I’ve done this. But I digress.

Telling McOther about my episode with the keys, he said cheerfully, ‘Crikey! I’d really hate to be you. Although if I was, I think I’d have thought about changing something by now.’

I tried to explain that changing this behaviour would be a complete fucking joy but that repeated attempts to do so have ended up in failure and indeed depression. It is abundantly clear to me that the reason I am such a cheerful personality is that were I not, the unnatural degree of fucking uselessness which which I am lumbered would certainly have caused me to top myself. It appears I am no more able to change my bollock‐brained ness than an amputee is able to grow back their lost limb. Indeed if my efforts are anything to go on, an amputee trying to regrow a lost leg is marginally more likely to succeed.

On the upside, I suppose my life is never dull.

Speaking of which, the old dears were in good form this week and I saw my Uncle and Aunt too, which is always great fun. Lunch over and as I was leaving, Mum drew my attention to the dolls house our gardener, but more of a family member really, made for me as a kid. It is a replica of our house and had been languishing in the barn at Mum and Dad’s for years until my sis in law and niece had found it, got it out, cleaned it up, got rid of the woodworm and washed everything that could be saved and washed.

Dolls house, from the back.

‘Do get them to take it away, darling, it’s cluttering up the place,’ said Mum.

Turns out Sis in Law and niece aren’t sure they have room for it. And it is manky. It needs fixed.

‘I think we should just bin it,’ said Mum.

‘But we can’t do that!’ I say, ‘think how much thought and love went into making it.’

‘True,’ said Mum, ‘But we really can’t have it lying around here. Why don’t you have it?’

‘Really? Thanks,’ I say, not even thinking how I’m going to get a 4x5ft dolls house into a Lotus, not to mention bringing home another large cluttery thing to clutter up our house. My poor, poor husband. It’s probably not even going to fit into his sensible(ish) alfa but I’ll take it down next week and have a look, anyway.

It’s a wonderful, if knackered thing, though, this doll’s house. The windows are cut carefully with a fret saw and glassed with perspex cut to size from the windows of the sidecar from Arthur’s old motorbike. The lay out and rooms are a replica of our house, except for the downstairs loo but I think we can let that go.

The actual house

Dolls house, from the front.

It opens in all the right places for maximum access to all areas. It’s not quite the right size for standard dolls house furniture so Arthur made tiny chairs and tables to go with it. Mum made tiny duvets and valences to go round the beds and little cushions.

As a child, I ‘decorated’ it, myself using felt for carpets (long since eaten by a variety of rodents and insects in the barn) and the contents of a 1970s wall paper sample book. As a result some of the decor is a tad … lurid.

A full on view of some of the attractive shades of decor 10 year old me chose. Geez I was classy!

So I’m going to paint it up, sort it out and redecorate the inside. I may even try making some furniture, although, it’ll have to be paper mache. But you never know, maybe the chaos fairies will move in, and if they have somewhere to live perhaps the little bastards will piss off and leave me alone!